Wilkins

INTRODUCTION

“The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits the infliction of ‘cruel and unusual punishments,’ imposes various restrictions on the use of the death penalty as a punishment for crime. One such restriction is that any legislative scheme defining criminal conduct for which death is the prescribed penalty must include some narrowing principle that channels jury discretion and provides a principled way to distinguish those cases in which the death penalty is imposed from the many cases in which it is not. A death-eligibility criterion that fails to meet this standard is deemed impermissibly vague under the Eighth Amendment.” (People v. Bacigalupo (1993) 6 Cal.4th 457, 462 (Bacigalupo).) In California, special circumstance criteria codified in Penal Code section 190.2, including the felony-murder special circumstance set forth in subdivision (a)(17), perform

the narrowing function demanded by the Eighth Amendment. 1 In 2018, the Legislature enacted Senate Bill No. 1437 (2017–2018 Reg. Sess.), which amended the mens rea requirements for the crime of murder and restricted the circumstances under which a person can be liable for murder under the…